71 unmanned systems
inside
April/May 2016
ENGINEERING. PRACTICE. POLICY.
"This involves attendance at a ground school,
familiarization with an operations manual,
much f lying practice and a f light exam."
Future Trends
Rauxloh said future drones will feature im-
provements in battery and motor technologies,
extending f light duration. He also anticipates
increasing automation. "The BNUC-S pilot
certification already has a class of f light exam
standards suitable for SUAs (small unmanned
aircraft) that follow a preplanned route imme-
diately from launch, and that will recover and
land themselves autonomously too."
There will also be more advanced imaging
technologies available for small drones. Back
at the Welsh hillfort, Lock said the ability to
generate 3D models and digital terrain models
(DTMs) from vertical aerial photos was already
extremely valuable, but his group is now hop-
ing to undertake a more advanced survey using
drone-mounted LiDAR, targeting an Iron-Age
hillfort known as Badbury Camp.
Any number of sensor system types can the-
oretically be mounted on a drone for archaeo-
logical purposes, depending on weight and size.
Dennis Menick, sales and marketing director at
Switzerland's SwissDrones, said tests have been
carried out using the SIR3000 3D ground pen-
etrating radar system made by Geophysical
Survey Systems, Inc., a traditionally ground-
based measuring device, in combination with
a vertical take-off and landing UAV.
Mounting a handheld device such as the
SIR3000 onto a drone implies several things:
human physical effort is reduced during the
actual survey; operators don't have to move
the device across the ground themselves; ir-